


Plausible Ladybug

by Ladroitte



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Gen, Rational Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-03-23 09:44:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13784865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladroitte/pseuds/Ladroitte
Summary: Passionate sceptic Marinette Dupain-Cheng and cynical teen model Adrien Agreste are offered superpowers in return for protecting Paris from a newly risen supervillain. Marinette is too curious to say no. Adrien reasons that at least it can’t make his miserable life any worse.An attempt at a rational fic taking place in the Miraculous Ladybug universe.(More character tags will be added as the story progresses.)





	1. Mira-callous Lady-bag

**Author's Note:**

> So this is something new and fun I've been plotting for a while. It's inspired by the fanfic "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" by Eliezer Yudkowsky (go read it, it's amazing!), but since I'm not a 38-year-old AI researcher and only learned about rationality two and a half years ago, it's going to be a more light version of a so-called rational fic.
> 
> Anyway, feel free to let me know if you like it!

‘ _Miraculous Ladybug?_ ’ the dark-haired girl echoed at the small, red fairy floating in the air in front of her. Her forehead was wrinkled in disbelief beneath her bangs. ‘Really?’

The fairy— _Tikki_ , Marinette reminded herself—looked puzzled. ‘Is there a problem?’ she asked in an unnaturally high-pitched voice.

‘No, no,’ Marinette said carefully. ‘I don’t want you to think I’m ungrateful, I just… Well… Isn’t it a bit cringeworthy to shout something like that?’

Tikki gave her a blank look. ‘But you have to purify the city of evil!’

‘Yeah, of course, I totally get that!’ Marinette assured her, although she did have some things to say about _that_ part too. ‘But what does the actual shouting do? Does the phrase “Miraculous Ladybug” unlock some secret power that won’t work unless I shout exactly those two words? And what about the gesture—you said I have to throw something in the air?’

‘Yes, the item that you get from using your Lucky Charm—the item that will help you get what you most desire!’

‘Oh, yes, _that_ ,’ Marinette said with a deep sigh. ‘The luck-based, polka-dotted object that appears out of thin air and supposedly solves any problem I have as long as I can figure out how to use it in that particular situation. After having captured the Hakuna—’

‘Akuma,’ Tikki corrected her with a giggle.

‘Sorry, Akuma—I throw the polka-dotted object in the air at the same time as I shout “Miraculous Ladybug”, which creates a swarm of magical little ladybugs that transform everything back to normal.’

Tikki nodded, seemingly relieved that the girl finally understood.

‘Now, what I’m wondering is… what happens if I don’t shout those words? Or if, let’s say, I accidentally mispronounce the phrase and end up shouting “Mira- _callous_ Lady- _bag_ ”? Does that change anything? Do I conjure up a swarm of evil moths instead? Do I destroy the world?’

The small, bright red face of the fairy was wrinkled in confusion. ‘No, I don’t think so… I don’t know… No one’s really tried before.’

Marinette exhaled, letting her shoulders relax. ‘So then, the phrase probably doesn’t matter.’ She cocked her head to one side, suddenly thoughtful. ‘But then what about the gesture? What if I don’t throw the object in the air? Can I purify Paris by just waving it around a bit? At what point do my gestures activate the cleansing?’ Her eyes lit up. ‘This calls for thorough experimentation. I have to make some testable predictions.’

The fairy looked as the human girl got up from her bed, danced over to her desk and flipped open a well-thumbed, pink notebook. For a long moment, Tikki just hovered in the air, staring at the frenetic scribbling. It almost seemed as if the page would burst into flame in any second.

‘Maybe that can wait until we’ve captured the Akuma?’ the dumb-struck fairy asked.

Marinette looked up with a frown. ‘Oh… Yeah. Sorry. Um… How do I transform?’

‘You just have to say, “Tikki, spots on!”’

There was a short pause.

‘ _Really?_ ’

* * *

_~ 54 minutes earlier ~_

It was impossible to walk into the classroom that morning without instantly noticing the ruckus in the back. As Marinette scanned the room for an empty seat—her old one, next to Max, was occupied by a student she hadn’t seen before—her eyes inadvertently landed on the blonde, crying mess on the second-to-last row.

‘It’s just not fair,’ Chloé Bourgeois sobbed into her desk. Two other girls, Sabrina and Rose, were sitting on either side of her, seemingly trying to comfort her. ‘This was all he had. Why did they have to take that away from him?’

‘Maybe he’s coming back in a while?’ Rose tried, rubbing circles on Chloé’s back.

‘No,’ the blonde sniffled. Without lifting her head from the desk, she held up her phone so that Rose could see the screen. ‘Look what he said. His dad’s pulled him out, for real.’

Coming to the conclusion that she didn’t really care what Chloé was so upset about—it just seemed to be about some boy, anyway—Marinette walked up to the only free space in the classroom, which was in the front row next to the shiest boy in class, Nathaniel Kurtzberg. He glanced at her from beneath his red bangs. She was pretty sure she hadn’t heard him speak more than a few sentences for as long as they had been classmates, but despite his shyness, he didn’t seem to mind having an explosively eye-catching hair-colour.

‘Hey,’ she tried casually, at which he immediately turned away, muttering what sounded like a “hello” under his breath.

‘Now, now, Miss Bourgeois, I’m sure you will be able to see him after school,’ Miss Bustier called from the front of the classroom. ‘Dry your tears and bring out your notebook, please.’

Marinette didn’t have to turn around to know that Chloé was appalled by the lack of sympathy; she heard the gasp all the way to the front row. But no comment was made aloud, and the students in the room obediently got to their seats and brought out their books.

‘For those of you who don’t know me yet, I’m Miss Bustier, and I will be your homeroom teacher this year.’ She directed this introduction mostly to the only new student in the room, which was a curvy, tan girl with brown curls of hair fading into a deep red towards the tips. When she realised that almost all of her new classmates were staring at her, she pushed her square glasses up along her nose and sagged into her seat. Marinette looked away to give her some slack.

‘We’ll start slow today,’ Miss Bustier continued with a soft smile. ‘I just have some information about our policies and what this year has in store for you, and then we’ll go through your schedule—’

A loud, high-pitched scream from outside the classroom cut her off. Everyone turned to the door in silence. Marinette frowned. Probably just one of the fangirls squealing over the arrival of that model. With a sigh, she turned back to her notebook, but she hadn’t even placed the tip of the pen against the paper before another scream rang out. As she spun back towards the door, she—along with everyone else in her class—could see people running past outside.

Miss Bustier’s eyes widened. ‘Stay in your seats,’ she tried as some of the students ran up to the door. ‘Kim! Get back, now!’ She walked over to the group of students, carefully pushed them away from the door, and opened it. Cautiously, she stuck her head out. ‘What is going o—’

‘Don’t just stand there!’ an upset voice from outside shouted. ‘Go _create!_ ’

There was a flash of light, and then Miss Bustier’s posture changed in a second. Her back straight as a ramrod, she marched over to the whiteboard, grabbed a handful of coloured pencils and started drawing frenetically. Marinette and her classmates all watched in shocked silence as their teacher created… what seemed like…

‘That’s _Adrien!_ ’

Marinette turned to the voice coming from the back of the classroom. Chloé Bourgeois was standing up and pointing at the whiteboard, black streaks of mascara running down her cheeks. _Adrien? The model boy?_

She turned back to the whiteboard. Miss Bustier had indeed drawn and coloured a picture of Adrien Agreste, but he wasn’t alone—in his arms, with her lips almost touching his, was a dark-haired girl Marinette didn’t recognise.

Until the door slammed open.

A girl who significantly resembled the one from Miss Bustier’s drawing was standing in the doorway, but something was strange about her appearance. At first, Marinette thought it was just that her eyes refused to focus for some reason, but no. The girl seemed almost… _drawn_ , as though she’d just stepped out of a comic. Her features were too simple, her colours too vivid. She even had a black outline that seemed to move with her as she walked into the room, making her look like she was a two-dimensional character regardless of the angle Marinette was viewing her at…

 _No,_ Marinette silently told herself. _That… that’s not possible, is it?_ It could be, she supposed, with the help of some simple light tricks… But this was just an ordinary classroom, without any equipment for that kind of thing, and _—wait is she doing what I think she is doing???_

The girl walked straight up to the whiteboard, gave it a quick once-over, and pulled out the chair from behind Miss Bustier’s desk, all while the teacher stood to the side admiring her own drawing with glee. From the chair, the girl then _jumped_ towards the whiteboard so decisively that Marinette couldn’t help but flinch away, but the collision never came.

The students let out a collective gasp. Marinette was pretty sure she heard Chloé sob as the comic girl—now just a two-dimensional image, merged with Miss Bustier’s drawing—leaned in and kissed the just as two-dimensional Adrien Agreste.

A quiet squee came from their teacher. ‘That’s so adorable!’ she exclaimed, throwing her hands over her mouth and blushing. But the comic girl didn’t seem to agree, because she pulled back after only a second, eyes literally burning with rage.

Now, Marinette hated it when people used the word “literally” incorrectly. When people said “literally”, they usually seemed to mean “virtually”. Usually, a person’s eyes didn’t _literally_ burn with rage, because if that were the case, it would violate the rule that spontaneous combustion without an external source of ignition could only occur if the autoignition temperature of the substance in question had been reached—that is, if the eyes were really, really hot. But in order to reach such a high temperature in a human body, one almost certainly needed some other source of heat. In fact, most cases of spontaneous human combustion had in the end turned out to not have been “spontaneous” in that they actually had external causes, such as a nearby fire catching on to a person’s clothing and feeding on their body fat. Simple _rage_ was definitely not enough of a spark, and certainly not a fuel comparable to body fat.

But this girl’s eyes really _were_ burning—literal flames shot out from her sockets—and judging by the look on her face, she was absolutely furious.

Maybe Marinette should have been shocked, but her brain was still trying to untie the knot that was the comic look and black outline of the girl’s body, along with the fact that she had _stepped into the whiteboard and become a part of Miss Bustier’s drawing._ The girl was virtually a drawing herself now, and when Marinette thought of it that way, it sort of made sense to illustrate rage with burning eyes.

Her assumption was confirmed when the girl jumped back out of the whiteboard with completely normal eyes—well, except for the fact that they were unnaturally large and simplified in their details.

‘It’s _not enough!_ ’ she yelled at the top of her lungs. Miss Bustier fell down on her knees beside the girl.

‘I can do better,’ she promised in a meek voice.

‘No!’ The girl looked around the classroom, her gaze coming to rest on… Chloé. She pointed at the sobbing girl, a strong light flashing from the tip of her index finger and zooming over to Chloé. ‘You. Draw me a new scene.’

As the now unnaturally stiff Chloé started towards the front of the classroom, Marinette decided it was time to get out, and so she silently slipped away while the girl was preoccupied with watching Chloé erase the drawing on the whiteboard.

Marinette’s fingers were itching to write down everything she had seen in her notebook, but her self-preservation instinct was stronger, and so she had the good sense to run straight home.

* * *

 

Having a father with his own bakery on the first floor of the apartment building and a mother who was an acclaimed author and worked from home most of the time had allowed Marinette to grow up with both of her parents constantly present in her life—at least, when she wasn’t in school. Also, having a _father with his own bakery on the first floor of the apartment building_ had some other _very_ pleasant consequences.

It was just that as Marinette hurriedly closed the bakery’s door behind her this morning, neither she nor her father had baked goods on their minds.

‘Marinette?’ he asked in surprise from behind his moustache, his large hands tucked into even larger oven mittens. Marinette barely noticed the two customers turning their heads as she marched behind the counter, stood on her tiptoes and bent her neck to be able to barely reach his ear.

On the run home from school, she’d gone through in her mind what she would tell her parents. At first, she actually _had_ considered telling the truth, but they really had no good reason to believe her other than that they trusted her in general, and that trust _might_ have taken a hit last Spring when she’d gone to a rationality convention in Brussels while her parents thought she was having a sleepover with Max. But really, _she,_ a _sleepover,_ and with _Max?_ The guy was cool, but the idea of the two of them having a sleepover together was just crazy silly. She had felt bad about lying to them, though—her parents were pretty awesome to allow her to sleep at a boy’s place just like that. Then again, they had met Max. They knew what a kind, completely harmless dork he was.

But no, she couldn’t tell them the truth about what had happened in school. They would just assume that she was skipping classes (which, as a matter of fact, she was, but she had a completely rational reason for doing so).

Her next thought had been to just sneak in by climbing the fire escape up to her balcony, but that would have involved some serious risk-taking, and besides, she didn’t want to completely _avoid_ her parents. That seemed to cross an invisible line.

The third idea was the one she settled for in the end.

‘Girl problems,’ she whispered in her father’s ear, and when he blinked at her before nodding furiously, she ran past him and up the stairs to their apartment.

Her mother seemed to be holed up in the office, so the path was clear all the way up to her room. She threw her bag on the bed and started up her computer. She doubted there would be anything on the news about what had happened just yet, but when there was, she didn’t want to miss it.

She couldn’t wait even one minute longer to start scribbling down theories about what had happened. Her thoughts always cleared when she got to capture them on paper. Returning to her bag, she turned it upside down in her impatience to find her notebook. The pink book landed on the bed with a soft thud, but so did something else—something she was quite sure she had never seen before in her life. Her hands frozen in the air with a tight grip around the bag’s edges, she frowned at the small, octagon-shaped box lying next to her favourite engraved pencil.

The wooden box was dark brown with an ornate red circle-pattern on the top. She didn’t recognise the pattern, but she made a mental note to look it up later. Slowly, she put her bag down on the floor next to the bed and sat down to take a closer look at the foreign item. She carefully ran her fingertips along the smooth edges. What was this? A secret present from her parents?

She opened the box and just had time to catch sight of a pair of red and black ear studs before a strong, red light flashed right in her face. Marinette flinched, dropping the box on the floor right as the light widened and brightened, then diminished until it was completely gone, leaving only a palm-sized red creature in its wake.

Marinette stared.

The creature smiled. It reminded Marinette of a fairy she’d read about as a child.

‘Hi!’ it greeted in an unnaturally squeaky voice.

Marinette stared some more. ‘H-hi?’

The fairy’s smile widened. ‘Wow, you’re so calm! That’s great!’

That made Marinette’s brain start working again. She blinked at the small creature, which she suddenly noticed had black spots, like a ladybug, and what seemed like absolutely, ridiculously tiny little red wings on the back.

 _I probably shouldn’t be calm, should I?_ she thought. _The world is going crazy around me and I’m just apathetic. That’s not healthy._

But then again, what was the point in panicking if she wasn’t panicked? Somehow, this seemed like a small thing compared to what had happened in school earlier. Which reminded her…

‘Do you have something to do with Comic Girl?’ she asked.

The fairy frowned. It looked really weird on that tiny face. ‘Comic Girl?’

Just then, a voice from the news site opened on the computer’s browser interrupted their conversation. ‘We’ve just received word that a student in Françoise Dupont is running amok, forcing fellow students as well as teachers to draw so-called “fan art” for her. While this may sound oddly harmless, the emergency services have received a number of calls reporting “zombie-like” and “extremely obsessed” behaviour from the ones who have been affected by this student’s manipulation. We will update you on this strange event as more information surfaces.’

The fairy gasped beside Marinette. ‘Oh no! We have to hurry!’

‘What? What is this? What are you?’ Marinette demanded, jumping off the bed in a sudden rush of adrenaline. The reality of what had happened had finally begun to sink in, and her mind was racing to make sense of it all.

‘My name is Tikki, and I’m a kwami,’ Tikki said with a friendly smile before pointing at the box on the floor. ‘Those jewelleries are called a “Miraculous” and if you put them on, I can give you special powers that will help you stop Comic Girl!’

_… Huh._

The appropriate reaction to that statement probably wasn’t to grin like a crazy person, but Marinette couldn’t stop herself.

‘What powers?’ she asked.

Tikki seemed taken aback by the (in Marinette’s opinion, perfectly reasonable) question. ‘The power of luck…’

Marinette’s smile was gone in an instant. _Luck-based powers. Great. Just great. Who wouldn’t want to fight a supervillain with random chance on their side?_

‘… and creation,’ the kwami finished.

At that, the girl perked up again. ‘The power of _creation?_ ’ she squeaked out.

Tikki nodded.

 _Well,_ Marinette thought, _I guess I can work with that._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seems kinda irresponsible to give a teenager the power of creation, eh?
> 
> In the next chapter, we'll finally get to see what's up with poor Adrien in this fic...


	2. Epic Chaos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We meet Adrien, and Adrien meets the tiniest cat he has ever seen.

**> Running late?  <**

Adrien sighed quietly as he read the new message on the lock screen of his phone. He was just about to reach for it when an austere throat clearing made him freeze. Glancing up, his gaze met that of Nathalie Sancoeur, who looked at him sternly. He sighed again and withdrew his hand. At that, her expression softened.

‘Adrien,’ she said, ‘I know this will take some getting used to—’

‘Yeah, because my father making life choices for me without even involving me in the decision-making process is such a new thing.’

‘You are his son, Adrien, his only son. He loves you.’

‘Gotta hurt the ones you love,’ Adrien mumbled, returning his attention to the iPad in front of him on the table. _And spoil them with expensive gifts in an attempt to buy their love back._

He’d already been on his way to school that morning when Nathalie had called him back, informing him that his father wanted a word. That “word” had turned out to be several words, none of them very pleasing to hear.

‘You will not be going to school, Adrien.’

The teenage boy had frowned, his grip on the backpack strap over his shoulder loosening somewhat. ‘There’s been a rescheduling?’

His father, who had been facing the other direction, now turned to his son with a resolute look on his face. ‘No,’ he said, and if Adrien hadn’t known his father, he would’ve almost thought he heard a hint of regret in his voice. ‘No work today. You will not be going to school, period. Starting today, you will be home-schooled by Nathalie. Eventually, I will try to find someone more qualified; however—’

Adrien’s backpack had slid off his shoulder and landed on the floor with a thud.

‘You’re pulling me out of _school?_ ’ he exclaimed, eyes wide.

Ignoring the outburst of his son, Gabriel Agreste continued, ‘Without the distraction of other students and under-qualified teachers, your days can be planned out much more effectively, meaning that you will get more time for your extracurricular activities.’

‘You mean modelling,’ Adrien had snarled. ‘A.k.a. _work._ ’

Gabriel had paused then. With a deep sigh, he’d walked up to the boy and placed a hand on his shoulder. Adrien had needed to fight himself not to flinch away. Instead, he’d settled for avoiding to look in his father’s eyes.

‘It’s not only to lighten up your schedule, but also for your safety,’ Gabriel had continued, his voice softer now. ‘As you grow older and gain more attention, you will be at higher risk.’

‘At higher risk for what?’ Adrien had asked in frustration. ‘Teenage girls? Oh, wow, I’m shaking in fear.’

Gabriel had pursed his lips before withdrawing his hand. Then he’d turned around and walked back up to his office desk. ‘This is not up for discussion.’

_Nothing ever is anymore._

Adrien glanced up from the iPad. Nathalie had her attention focused on her own device, no doubt attempting to multitask in order to catch up with all the tasks his father assigned to her on a daily basis. Pay the bills, book appointments, tighten Adrien’s schedule for the umpteenth time… It was so easy for the boy to take out his anger on Nathalie, but rationally, he knew that she was only doing her job. And ever since his mother had left, Nathalie had taken on an almost motherly role in his life. The fact that she usually failed miserably wasn’t due to her own faults—it was because Gabriel worked her so hard she practically had nothing at all to work with. Adrien understood all that in theory, but in practice, it just felt good to have someone to blame. Someone to snarl at.

And sometimes, someone to disobey.

With a move worthy of a ninja, Adrien snagged his phone from the table and sneaked it into his lap under the table. As inconspicuously as he could, he then unlocked it and started typing a reply into the open conversation.

**_> Apparently I’m going to be home-schooled from now on.  <_ **

He glanced up again. Nathalie was still occupied with her iPad. And his own phone was already buzzing.

**> ???  <**

**_> Dad thinks teen girls are dangerous…  <_ **

**> Pls say ur kidding ** **<**

Adrien sighed as he typed out the next message.

**_> Not kidding. I’ll call u later, k?  <_ **

‘Adrien.’

With a jolt, he sat up straight, carelessly dropping the phone to the floor. He cursed under his breath as Nathalie walked up beside him, frown on her face.

‘Where did your phone go, I wonder?’ she asked, eyeing the empty space next to his tablet.

‘It must’ve vibrated off the table or something. I didn’t notice, I’ve been focusing on the assignment.’

She cocked an eyebrow behind her frameless glasses. When she opened her mouth as if to speak, Adrien steeled himself for some scolding, but then she closed it again and shook her head before turning around and walking away, hands busy fiddling with her device.

‘Let’s take a break.’

Eyebrows raised in surprise, Adrien waited until she had left the room before he bent down to pick up his phone. He’d expected more messages, but the lock screen was empty. Tucking the phone in the back pocket of his jeans, he stood up and left the room.

His bedroom had never seemed so large before. Usually, he was so busy he barely had any time to spend there, and when he did, it was often with Chloé. That girl knew how to make any room seem small. She had never been especially loud in school, but when the two of them were alone, she could talk for ages. It was like she bottled up all these little thoughts of hers all day long and then spilled them all out just for him in the evenings. Without her sitting there on his sofa, or strolling around among the bookcases on the upper floor, or gazing out through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the room was too large, too quiet... and too lonely.

Adrien sighed as he closed the door. He almost wanted the break to be over already. Time to think meant time to grieve, and he already had more than enough of that in the evenings.

‘FINALLY!’

Adrien froze, eyes scanning the large room. Where had that come from? Without turning his head, he fumbled behind his back for the fencing foil that always hung on the wall close to the door. Just as his fingers closed around the grip, he saw movement over by the sofa.

He whipped the foil in front of him in one smooth movement as something small and black leapt from the sofa and came towards him rapidly. Acting on adrenaline, he lunged forward and thrust the foil towards his attacker, but the black little creature dodged quickly and easily, zipping between the movements of the foil in such an elegant way that Adrien completely lost his focus. The creature, which seemed to be some kind of flying rodent, reached the grip and easily knocked the foil out of the boy’s hand, sending it clattering to the floor. Narrowing its sharp green eyes, it then flew—no, floated—up to his face, where it hovered menacingly in the air for a moment as Adrien just stared.

‘W-wha—’

‘You call those reflexes?’ the rodent asked, and it sounded almost disappointed. ‘You don’t deserve me.’

Adrien blinked. No one, not even his father, had ever told him that before. Usually, people went in the opposite direction. _“I’m nothing compared to you,”_ another model had once told him; a girl who had crushed on him. _“I’m not even going to try to make you love me, because I don’t deserve you.”_ Admittedly, she had some problems, and people usually weren’t _that_ blunt, but it happened way too often that someone degraded their own worth in his vicinity. It was a fresh breeze to have it the other way for once.

That’s why, instead of feeling personally attacked, Adrien cocked his head to the side in curiosity. ‘And who are you?’

The creature straightened proudly. ‘I’m Prince Plagginius the Pawsome,’ he said. ‘But maybe you know me under one of my many titles: Cat Kwami Extraordinaire; God of Death and Destruction; Epic Chaos Lord of the Milky Way Galaxy; Holy Protector of the Feline Brethren; Immortal Trickster Deity; First Paw of the Order of the Miraculous; Eternal Bearer of Misfortune—’

‘You’re the smallest cat I’ve ever seen,’ Adrien said incredulously, cautiously waving with his hand in the air above the creature. _No strings… So it’s real?_

The Chaos Lord paused, hovering silently for another moment. Then he sighed. ‘You can call me Plagg.’

Adrien offered his hand to the tiny black cat. ‘I’m Adrien Agreste,’ he said. ‘Defiant Teen Model; Cynical Bastard of the Third Degree; Pathetically Spoiled Son of Famous Fashion Mogul; Newly Appointed Prince of Home-Schooling.’ He gave a low bow, hand still raised. ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance.’

Plagg scoffed. ‘I like you, kid. Maybe your god-awful reflexes can be improved… with some divine intervention.’ Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the creature zip away back to the sofa. ‘Come on.’

Adrien straightened and followed the talking cat, taking in the utter chaos that was his coffee table. The school bag, which he’d left on the table before dragging himself to his first lesson with Nathalie, had been turned over and completely emptied. Its contents were spread all over the luxurious surface. The expensive notebook his father had bought for him was now sporting ragged edges, as if tiny teeth had tried to chew on it from all angles; his pen, pencil and eraser were all wet and tossed dangerously close to the edges of the table; the chocolate bar he’d slipped into his bag from one of his secret stashes was robbed of its wrapping and lying half-eaten on top of his fencing helmet; and in the middle of it all lay a small, dark-brown box with an unfamiliar red pattern on top of its lid. It was open and lying on its side.

‘Epic Chaos Lord, huh,’ Adrien muttered, plopping down on the sofa. ‘I don’t remember putting that box in my bag?’

Plagg floated over to the box and pointed at its contents. ‘Here. Put this on, will ya?’

The thing that he wanted him to put on was a simple metallic ring with pointy tips at all four edges of its smooth top. Adrien reached towards the box and took the ring, examining it where it lay in his palm. He glanced at Plagg, who was hovering silently by the box.

‘Is this solid silver?’

Plagg’s chest puffed out. ‘What else would it be?’

‘So what happens if I put it on?’

The cat grinned. ‘Why don’t you see for yourself?’

Adrien shrugged and put the ring on.

…

…

…

Nothing happened.

Unable to hide his disappointment, Adrien slouched back against the backrest. ‘Thanks for the gift, but I’m not really into jewellery.’

Plagg rolled his eyes. ‘You stupid kitty,’ he complained. ‘I can’t transform you if you don’t say the magical words.’

‘Magical wo—wait, did you just call me kitty? Because that’s _not_ going to be a thing.’

The cat pressed a teeny, tiny paw down against the power button on the TV. Immediately, a news segment fired up, showing low-quality video of a girl frenetically spray-painting something on a brick wall.

‘… a student in Françoise Dupont is running amok, forcing fellow students as well as teachers to draw so-called “fan art” for her.’

Adrien stared with wide eyes at the TV screen, leaning forward with his arms resting on his thighs as he watched the girl in the video paint a colourful picture of…

‘Is that _me?_ ’

‘Uh-huh,’ Plagg confirmed. ‘I bet that school’s filled with nothing but pictures of your pretty face by now.’

The news anchor continued, ‘While this may sound oddly harmless, the emergency services have received a number of calls reporting “zombie-like” and “extremely obsessed” behaviour from the ones who have been affected by this student’s manipulation. We will update you on this strange event as more information surfaces.’

Plagg pressed the button again, and the picture was snuffed out. Adrien ran his hands through his hair.

‘What the hell was that, Plagg? What’s going on?’

‘That,’ the kwami said solemnly, ‘was your origin story. And my job is to haul you over there so you can work your—well, my—magic.’

Adrien groaned and got up from the sofa, bringing his left hand to his right ring finger and starting to pull the ring off. ‘Yeah, I’m not the superhero you’re looking for.’

Plagg widened his eyes and zipped up to the boy’s hand, covering the silver ring with his tiny paws. ‘What are you doing?!’

‘Find someone else, okay? I’m not interested.’

‘What, you’ve never dreamt of having supernatural powers? What kind of kid are you?’

After flicking off the cat kwami from his hand, Adrien gripped the ring, pulled it off his finger and put it back in the box. ‘The kind of kid who can’t possibly fit a superhero career in his already overloaded schedule.’

Plagg’s face twisted in disgust. ‘Oh, so you’re too busy to save Paris? Too good for those girls out there who are suffering because of you?’

Adrien turned to fix the kwami with a sharp gaze. ‘Because of me?’

‘Why else do you think they’d be painting pictures of you? Huh?’

The boy shook his head, then his shoulders, in an attempt to shake the allegations off. ‘This has nothing to do with me, and I don’t owe those girls anything. Get out and find someone else.’ He started in the direction of the door.

_I can’t deal with this right now. I don’t have the time, I don’t have the strength and I don’t have the right mind for it. Plagg’s wrong; it’s not that I’m too good, it’s that I’m not good enough. Why can’t he see that?_

‘Just give it a try!’ the kwami shouted after him. ‘It can’t make your life any worse than it already is!’

Adrien stopped in his tracks. Stared down at his feet. Took a deep breath and counted to ten. His heart was pounding in his ears, and his legs were trembling, but he still turned around, slowly, to look the kwami in the eyes.

‘You don’t know my father,’ he said in a low voice.

‘I know enough,’ Plagg replied calmly.

Adrien didn’t have anything to say to that.

‘Put the ring on, kitty.’

A moment’s hesitation, and then Adrien walked up to the box with the ring. With a dejected sigh, he put the ring back on his finger.

‘Just repeat after me,’ the small god continued. ‘ _Plagg, claws out._ ’

‘Plagg,’ Adrien murmured, ‘claws out.’

The sudden rush of impressions that enveloped him in that moment caught him completely off his guard. Everything was _light_ and _warmth_ and _exhilaration_ and _energy_ and _power_ , and it was all so thick he could practically taste it, but then it was over before he’d barely even registered it, and he was wearing an all-black outfit, the inner parts of which clung snugly to his body while the outer part—the word “veil” came to mind—enveloped his head in a black hood before flowing down his back and ending in at least a dozen thin strips of dark fabric that reached almost all the way to the floor. He lifted his hands in front of his face and saw that they were clad in black, too, and that his fingertips ended in long, dark claws.

As he watched, they retracted.

He stumbled back in shock, tripping over the armrest of the sofa and tumbling to the floor, butt first. As he tried to get up again, he noticed his feet were bare, save for the fabric of his suit, which faded into the skin on top of his feet in a way that made it look like the fabric was part of him. Tentatively, he reached around and touched the soles of his feet. They felt almost leathery.  

‘PLAGG!’ he called out. ‘Plagg, what the hell did you do to me?!’

There was no answer.

With a sigh, Adrien got up from the floor—and realised he felt a thousand times lighter on his feet than he ever had before. Suddenly curious, he leapt up on the sofa’s armrest, then jumped to the backrest and, from there, made an enormous leap towards the second floor with all the bookcases, where he grabbed hold of the glass railing and easily pulled himself up without even breaking a sweat. After landing lightly on the floor, he stared down at the sofa below. _That must have been at least seven or eight metres, with this floor level being about four metres up from the lower one…_ _Holy hell._

This was _definitely_ not just some weird hallucination.

… Was it?

‘Adrien! Break’s over.’

Adrien’s head whipped around to face the door, panic already rising in his throat. He couldn’t be seen like this. But he had no clue how to transform back to his regular self, so he needed to get out of there.

_The windows._

With another elegant leap, he landed right by the floor-to-ceiling windows behind the TV. A quick flick of his wrist and a short jump, and he was out. The blinding sun barely even seemed to touch the black fabric of his suit, but it was hot on his naked cheeks. And if it was hot, it meant he was also clearly visible in the sunlight, standing on a window pane of the mansion of Gabriel Agreste while dressed in a black veil with tassels running down his back.

He did all he could think to do.

He made another great leap.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Somehow, all of my chapters always end up around 3000 words long? Guess that's just how my writing flows naturally.)
> 
> This chapter was a little low on the out-spoken rationality since Adrien's, well... just a kid trying to make his life work. But don't worry, Marinette Dupain-Sceptic-Cheng a.k.a the Miracallous Ladybag is returning in the next chapter, where her new partner makes her question whether she truly is the only sane person alive.


	3. Lucid Catastrophe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adrien and Marinette meet each other for the first time - as superheroes - and Marinette conjures something illegal with her Lucky Charm.
> 
> This chapter also includes:  
> \- Intelligent mud  
> \- Vomit  
> \- An attempt at French (i.e. vomit)
> 
> Enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took me so long to write. To be fair, action scenes are hard, and this chapter is twice as long as the previous two. 
> 
> Something you might be interested in knowing - I changed Adrien's superhero outfit to better reflect his personality in this fic. You can go back to the very last part of the 2nd chapter if you want to see it in its entirety, but it's not required. :)
> 
> Lastly - there is a very small reference to abuse in this chapter.

_Who is **that?**_

Leaning out from his hiding place behind a chimney, Adrien peered at the thin, dark-haired girl in the slim, polka-dotted suit. She was standing with her back turned to him and her hands resting on her hips as she watched the streets below. Red fabric reached out from her ankles to her wrists like a membrane, undulating slightly in the wind. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail, and he was pretty sure those things that were resting atop her head were a pair of black aviator goggles. Around her hips—cleverly threaded through two small holes in the membrane—sat a black belt, but the only two things currently fastened to it were a small pouch and a round object in the same pattern as her suit.

_Another one like me?_

Unsure whether to make his presence known or move on, he watched as the girl pulled that round object off her hip and began to absent-mindedly toss it up in the air before catching it again, repeatedly.

‘Lucky charm, huh,’ she murmured to herself. ‘Why couldn’t it be “ultra-intuitive charm” or “this-was-exactly-what-I-had-in-mind charm”?’

Adrien frowned. He wanted to walk up to her and ask if she had also been recently acquainted with a supposedly almighty rodent, but...

 _She’d probably freak out, just like everyone always does around me,_ he thought. _Best case scenario, she’d ask me for an autograph. Worst case scenario… she’d join the other stalkers._

‘Now, how would _this_ _thing_ know what I most desire,’ the girl mumbled, ‘if _I_ don’t even know?’

He’d caught sight of the girl on his way to the school, which was for the best, because if he hadn’t, he might have missed the fact that the fangirl from TV had taken to the streets. As it was, he knew that she was currently down below, forcing a group of people to build an impromptu statue for her with just clay and blowlamps. Didn’t seem like too big of a threat at the moment, but still, if this girl here was a superhero, why didn’t she _do_ anything?

Adrien’s shoulders sagged. _Why am **I** not doing anything?_ _That girl might not even be like me, she might just be some lunatic standing on a rooftop dressed in red spandex—_

…

Red spandex.

Just like his black suit.

The black suit—coupled with a many-tailed veil, a cat-eared hood, and slitted green eyes behind a black mask—that made him look a lot like a _weird cat boy_ and nothing at all like _Adrien Agreste._

Wow, he hadn’t realised he was so _stupid._

* * *

‘What would be the most useful in this situation?’ Marinette mumbled as she watched Comic Girl shout orders to her brainwashed soldiers. ‘If I’m to destroy the possessed object… I need to identify it first. How would I do that?’

 _To figure out how to win, you first have to figure out how to lose._ That was something she’d learnt early on in her life, as a young girl with a lot more ambition than she had power. You had to know what your opponent wanted (or thought) so that you could use it against them. Trying to argue for your own side against someone with unknown allegiances was like trying to guess Rumpelstiltskin’s name without any intel from your royal messenger.

So what did Comic Girl want? That was easy; she wanted Model Boy. But short of kidnapping him from his mansion and bringing him here, Marinette couldn’t see how he would be of use to her in this fight. And she’d prefer not to resort to kidnapping on her first day as a superhero; it seemed like the kind of thing that could hurt one’s reputation. Besides, she wasn’t even sure _why_ Comic Girl wanted the model, or why she’d turned evil in the first place.

‘What happened to make you like this?’ she murmured to herself. ‘What’s your story?’

‘Why don’t you just ask her?’

Marinette was so shocked by the sudden question behind her that she nearly stumbled over the edge of the roof. In the last second, a hand shot out to catch her wrist and pull her back into safety. Two green cat eyes— _wait, what?_ —were glaring at her. But it wasn’t an actual cat that had saved her—the eyes were firmly positioned in the face of a boy with wild blond hair sticking out beneath a black hood, complete with a flowing veil, a black mask and… and… _are those actual claws???_

With wide eyes, she jerked her arm back and stepped away from both him and the roof’s edge.

‘Let me guess,’ she exclaimed. ‘A cat fairy?’

‘The title he gave was a little more grandiose than that, but yeah.’ The boy quickly looked her up and down. ‘And you? An almighty ladybug?’

‘If by “almighty” you mean “significantly dependent on random chance”, then sure,’ she sighed. The boy looked at her weirdly.

‘So what’s the deal here? What were you muttering about just now?’

Marinette narrowed her eyes. ‘You were spying on me?’

‘If you don’t want to be spied on, maybe you shouldn’t talk to yourself.’

She felt her face get warm. ‘It’s really impolite to spy, especially on girls.’ _Although I would definitely have done the same in his situation._

The boy shrugged and walked up to the edge of the roof to get a glimpse of the statue below. ‘You’re dressed in red spandex and I’m a human cat. I think we’re above social rules.’

Marinette frowned, watching him as his eyes calmly—or was that impassively?—scanned the street below.

‘That,’ he stated, ‘is horrible.’

‘No kidding! She’s basically turning people into slaves.’

‘No, not that. The statue,’ he clarified, pointing at the lump of hardened clay. ‘If it can even be called that.’

Marinette heaved an internal sigh. ‘Great focus there, kitty.’

His head spun around in an instant, and suddenly those slits were aimed at her. ‘So what’s your plan, Bugeye?’

She stared at him. ‘I do _not_ have bug eyes!’

‘And I am not a kitty.’

‘ _Fine._ ’ She sighed again. ‘And the only plan I’ve come up with so far is to kidnap Model Boy, which is a little lacking to say the least. We need to find out what ignited her negative feelings.’

‘Model Boy?’

She groaned. _There’s that amazing focus again._ ‘Please don’t make me say his name.’

‘Why not? You’re one of his die-hard fans?’

At that, she turned to the boy. He was watching her cautiously, looking almost ready to bolt. She rolled her eyes. ‘Would you rather handle Comic Girl or stand here gossiping about Adrien Agreste?’

‘Whatever.’ He gestured in the general direction of the ruckus below. ‘Obviously she’s upset because… _Model Boy_ is going to be home-schooled from now on.’

Marinette cocked her head. ‘How do you know that?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Are _you_ one of his die-hard fans?’

‘I have my sources,’ he answered with a dismissive hand-wave.

She couldn’t help but get annoyed at his tone. ‘Fine, so she’s sulking. But that doesn’t tell us what the possessed obje— _hey, wait_!’

In vain, she reached out for the boy as he leapt off the edge of the roof. She watched in horror as he fell, closing her eyes before he reached the ground. But when she didn’t hear screams from below, she opened them again, just to see him seemingly untouched and walking slowly towards the statue.

 _What the…_ Marinette blinked in confusion. _Did he just land smoothly on the ground after jumping off a five-story building? Without shoes???_

She clasped her yo-yo harder. In accordance with Tikki’s instructions, she’d used it sort of like a grappling hook gun to launch herself into the air and up onto the rooftops of Paris. Maybe she could use it to get down fast, too?

After spinning around and walking up to the nearest chimney, she quickly wrapped the string of the yo-yo around it a couple of times. But as she was about to tie it together, she paused. How in the world was she supposed to get it loose afterwards, without having to climb up here again? Sure, it was a magical item, but a knot on a string was still a knot on a string, and it was physically impossible for that large yo-yo thingy to untie itself, so the only way it could get loose if she left the rooftop was by snapping, and if _that_ happened while she was climbing down, she would most definitely die.

Also, the yo-yo would be worthless if the string snapped.

So how was she supposed to do this?

Frustrated to bits, she removed the string from the chimney and walked up to the edge again. Maybe she would land safely too, if she jumped?

_No, he made it because he’s a cat._

_No again, that argument is stupid, he isn’t_ really _a cat._ Argh, she would never get used to this twisted logic.

Just then, the cat boy turned around and peered up at her where he was hiding behind the statue. He mouthed something to her, but did he really expect her to be able to read his lips just like that? He made a move towards her building as if to come up and get her, but she immediately raised a hand in warning.

 _No,_ she mouthed. _I’m doing this on my own._

He seemed to understand, because he backed away behind the statue again.

Marinette looked down at the yo-yo in her hand. As she did, the thin fabric between her arms and body caught her attention. An idea hatched that could either be described as incredibly bold or mind-bogglingly careless. She fastened the yo-yo to her belt, then extended her arms out to the sides. The red fabric stretched out with her, and the way the wind tugged at her proved to her that at least there was _some_ substance in her plan.

‘I thought I was supposed to be a ladybug, not a flying squirrel,’ she mumbled, but she knew it made a lot more sense to give her the ability to glide through the air than to grant her actual wings with which she could _fly_.

Taking a deep breath, she glanced down. _I can’t believe I’m about to do this, but…_

_Don’t think._

**_Do._ **

Usually, she was horrible at not thinking, but the urgency of the situation made her motivated enough to leap off the rooftop.

Only after it was already too late, she remembered that she had no experience whatsoever of gliding down from a rooftop.

In the next second, she also remembered that she had never enjoyed riding rollercoasters. And this was surprisingly similar to that.

Suddenly understanding why her transformation had tied up her hair in a ponytail, she peered against the whooshing of the wind resistance, heart galloping as she realised that she was headed right for—

‘ _Nooooo!_ ’

The statue toppled over from the force of Marinette’s speed and shattered when it hit the ground. She reached the pavement shortly after, thankfully remembering in the last second that rolling forward as one reached the ground was supposed to lessen the impact. Surprisingly whole and only a little shaken, she clumsily regained her balance and brushed some clay dust from her suit. To her right, Cat Boy was blinking at her in stunned awe; to her left, Comic Girl was furious.

‘You…! You destroyed my _magnum opus!_ ’

 _Better that thing than me,_ Marinette thought. Aloud, she replied, ‘The story ends here!’

A shudder went through her body. Not that she was a superhero fanatic or anything, but who in their right mind would pass on a chance to use a cheesy one-liner in a battle with a supervillain?

Comic Girl gritted her teeth. ‘No,’ she growled. ‘This has only been the preface. The story is about to _begin._ ’ She raised her hand and pointed a finger at Marinette’s face. ‘And _you_ will make sure that it does.’

Marinette just had time to widen her eyes as she saw tiny sparks leave Comic Girl’s fingertip. But before the unnatural ray of sparkling light could reach her, someone gave her a hard shove out of the way. She stumbled to the ground on her knees, groaning in anticipation of the imminent pain… and raising an eyebrow as none came.

‘You,’ she heard Comic Girl exclaim behind her. She cautiously got up on her feet and turned around to see the villain staring at Cat Boy, who was stupidly stiff right in front of her.

‘M-me?’

‘Yes. You’re passable. You will play him.’

‘Play… him…?’

In an instant, Comic Girl reached out and grabbed Cat Boy around the wrist. To his credit, he reacted fast—he slapped her hand off and backed away to a safe distance—but Comic Girl was almost as fast and made another jab in his direction in an attempt to grab him again. Cat Boy dodged this time, and then a second time, but he made no move against her.

And then finally, Comic Girl gave up—or so it would seem. She stopped in her tracks, clenched her hands into fists and gritted her teeth. After drawing in a deep breath, she then exclaimed, ‘He _will_ be mine!’

And she raised a hand with her index finger pointing at the broken statue. With rage burning in her eyes, and while Marinette and Cat Boy watched in a mix of shock and confusion, she sent out a bright light ray from the tip of her finger which landed in the middle of the heap of rocks.

Slowly, those rocks started gathering in the air, softening and joining with each other until they were one whole shape again. Then, they shaped something that looked vaguely like a human. It started moving, stretching out as though it had just been awoken from a long nap. Its shoulders grew arms, which grew hands, which grew fingers. Its leg muscles tightened and the shapeless clay by its feet formed soles and heels and toes. Finally, eyes and lips and a nose were carved and shaped out of its smooth face. Two pupils turned on Cat Boy, whose own widened.

Marinette watched in disbelief. _Why did she even bother putting all those people to work if she could just build it herself at a moment’s notice?_

Comic Girl pointed at Cat Boy. ‘Get him.’

Something like fear flashed across the boy’s face. He glanced at Marinette, who blinked confusedly. Then he turned and ran.

The statue took off after him at a speed and grace matching its well-sculpted thigh muscles. Marinette was frozen in awe at the sheer fact that Comic Girl had been able to create something that not only moved of its own accord, but that also did it _well_. Those were some next-level art skills.

With an awkward flick of her wrist, she swung her yo-yo and pulled herself back up towards the rooftops to join the chase after the poor kitty.

She ran along the street, keeping a secure watch on where the boy was running while trying not to stumble over chimneys and doves in her own path. When the cat veered into a side-alley and disappeared from view, the statue seemed stumped for a moment before choosing to continue on down the street. Marinette swung closer and watched as it ran to the next alley—one that was big enough for it to fit—and veered inside, hoping to catch up with his prey on the other side.

_So she created a statue that can a) move, b) move well, and c) **make intelligent decisions**???_

Awe-struck, Marinette turned around towards the place in the distance where she’d last seen Comic Girl. Whatever or _whoever_ was behind this, it was nothing to play around with.

 _I really hope the kitty’s found a safe hiding place_ , she thought as she ran towards the alley he’d disappeared into. She peered down into its dimness, but couldn’t see anyone, let alone a boy playing cat dress-up.

‘That statue is smart,’ someone huffed behind her. She spun around to see the very person she had been looking for, standing with his hands on his waist and his chest heaving. ‘Thank the Chaos Lord it’s fat.’

‘It’s not fat, it’s just large, just as a good statue should be,’ Marinette pointed out.

Cat Boy cocked an eyebrow. ‘Sure.’ He went over to the edge of the roof and peered down towards the street. ‘So how do you think—AARGH!’

She turned to him just as a hand grabbed him from below—a large, sturdy clay hand—and lifted him off the roof.

‘No!’ Marinette dashed forward and reached for Cat Boy’s outstretched hand, but their fingers only touched before he was pulled away. His slitted eyes grew larger.

‘Do something!’ he wheezed.

Marinette blinked in panic as the statue lowered its hand lower, down to street level, where Comic Girl was waiting. The girl gave a triumphant smile, even when the statue moved his hand so that Cat Boy was held upside down in front of her. She spoke, but Marinette couldn’t hear what she was saying.

_Okay, quick, think of something. What did Tikki say I could do again? Uh… Um… Right!_

Trying not to think of how silly she must look, she grabbed her yo-yo and spun it up into the air. ‘Lucky charm,’ she half-whispered, hoping it would be enough—and lo and behold, when the yo-yo was pulled down again by gravity it was accompanied by…

A polka-dotted bottle of vodka.

She stared at the bottle. _Vodka? The item that I most desire is a bottle of vodka?_

‘Um. Should I really be allowed to conjure vodka out of thin air? It seems kind of irresponsible—'

‘ _Gaaahh!_ A little help here, Bugeye?!’

Marinette’s gaze snapped to Cat Boy, who was still upside-down, struggling to get out of the steel grip of the large clay hand while Comic Girl closed in, her eyes closed and her lips puckered.

_Oh._

‘Coming!’ she shouted back, frowning at the bottle in her hand. Vodka… Alcohol… Clay… _Wait a minute._

The solution hit her like a bolt from the blue as she called to mind the time that her father had tried to get her into sculpting.

 _‘It’s just like baking,’_ he’d assured her, _‘except that you can’t eat the result!’_

 _‘Then what’s the point?’_ she’d asked, but he’d just laughed.

Her creation had been monstrous—an attempt at a dog that had accidentally gotten five legs instead of four, a left eye that was three times bigger than the right, and such a weirdly-shaped torso that they’d ended up calling it “The Hunchback of Dupain-Cheng”.

She’d gotten clay residue all over her hands, but had been unable to wash it off. So her father had handed her a bottle of hand sanitiser.

 _‘Try this,’_ he’d told her. _‘It dissolves the clay.’_

Marinette screwed the cork of the vodka bottle loose and stretched out her arms to the sides. Then she leapt off the roof.

She steered her glide towards the large statue, landing on one of its shoulders. Before it had registered her arrival, she tipped the vodka bottle over the hand that was holding the flustered Cat Boy and emptied its contents directly on the surface of the clay.

Some of it landed on the boy. ‘What the—is this _alcohol?_ ’

But the statue didn’t ask. It probably couldn’t talk, and even if it had possessed that ability, it probably wouldn’t have known what the contents of that bottle would do to it.

Marinette watched as the surface where the liquid had landed started fizzling. As the statue noticed it too, it started to shake its hand in an attempt to make it stop. Marinette cringed. _Oops._

‘Whoooa,’ Cat Boy exclaimed. ‘I’m going to be si—aaAAAAAAAHH!’

Just like that, the boy was flung out of the statue’s hand. Marinette thought fast. Swinging her yo-yo, she launched herself towards the rooftops again, reaching an arm out halfway to catch the unfortunate cat. But she’d miscalculated the force of the impact, and he ended up sending her off-balance and making the both of them turn upside-down as they rapidly closed in on the roof. Marinette flailed, desperately trying to fix the problem, but finding no help in the wind around them.

Then Cat Boy did something incredible. He stopped screaming all of a sudden, wrapped an arm around her waist, and righted the both of them in the air. In the next moment, he landed on the rooftop, unsteadily but safely, with Marinette in his arms. He quickly set her down beside him. She could only stare at him.

‘That was—’

She stopped herself when he fell to his knees and started vomiting right in front of her. She quickly turned away.

‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled, cheeks heated.

‘No,’ he panted when he seemed to have finished emptying his stomach, ‘that was clever. You couldn’t know—’ he dry-heaved once. ‘Ugh, you couldn’t know how easily I get motion sickness.’

Marinette glanced down at the street. ‘Well, I hope you can regain your powers fast, because we’re now dealing with one furious artist and her insulted piece of clay down there.’

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Cat Boy get up on wobbly legs. ‘I’m fine,’ he mumbled, wiping his mouth. ‘Let’s get this thing.’

He was about to leap off the roof, but she caught hold of one of the straps of fabric on his cloak, making him pause.

‘Do you even have a plan?’ she asked.

He gave her an impatient look. ‘You said something about destroying a possessed object, right?’

‘Yeah, but—’

‘Well, I’m sick and tired of this stupid lump of clay. So let’s have a little talk with that girl.’

At that, he tugged free of her grip and leapt off, once again landing softly on the ground. _That is so unfair,_ Marinette thought grumpily, extending her arms to glide after him.

While she glided through the air, she watched the boy run right up to Comic Girl, snatch her off her feet and lift her into his arms before making way for another narrow alley. Marinette adjusted her position so that she would land inside the alley, whooshing right past the statue, which was flailing wildly in the air in an attempt to catch her. Maybe it wasn’t as intelligent as she’d first thought.

Just as she landed by the opening of the alley, her ear studs gave a low beep in warning. She recalled what Tikki had told her. _After you use your power, you only have five minutes before you transform back._ She took a deep breath. Better get this over with, then.

She was a bit afraid that Cat Boy would do something rash against the girl, so she was shocked when she entered the alley and saw that he was on his back on the ground with Comic Girl straddling him and pushing his clawed hands into the ground.

‘ _Why won’t he love me?!_ ’ she screamed into his face. He flinched.

‘I—’

‘ _Why won’t_ anyone _love me?!_ ’

Marinette cleared her throat. ‘I’m not an expert in love or anything, but I don’t think forcing people to be your artistic slaves, kidnapping boys and screaming at them when they won’t kiss you is the right way to go if you want people to appreciate you.’

Comic Girl turned her head to look at Marinette. Her cheeks were streaked with tears. ‘It’s the only way I know,’ she whispered. ‘It’s the way papa taught me.’

That comment caught Marinette off-guard. She stared at the crying girl in front of her. _What… she… no._

‘Well, do you want to be like him?’ Cat Boy asked where he lay on the ground, staring up at the girl. ‘Or do you want to be Amy?’

Comic Girl froze, as did Marinette.

‘You know my name…?’

‘Of course I do. You’re Amy Kibble, the most talented artist at Françoise Dupont. Or are you? Because the Amy I know would never force people into doing something against their will.’

Amy’s arms trembled. ‘I… I…’

‘The Amy I know is kind and helpful and charming. And I can promise you: people like that girl. I promise you that… that the boy you like appreciate that Amy, too. You don’t need to force people—they already like you.’

Just like that, Amy released Cat Boy’s hands and crawled off him, pulling her legs up in front of her as tears continued to trickle down her cheeks. Marinette watched in stunned awe while the boy sat up next to her and started rubbing her back.

‘You really think they like me?’ Amy snivelled.

‘Yeah,’ he replied quietly, glancing up at Marinette, ‘I’m sure of it.’

She wiped her nose with the back of her hand before reaching into her painter’s coat. When she pulled out her hand again, she was holding a small notebook.

‘I think this is what you’re after,’ she sobbed, handing it to Cat Boy, who took it in his hands with great care.

‘Thank you,’ he said before standing up to face Marinette. ‘Here.’

She frowned at the notebook, whose front was filled with doodles around the words “Amy’s diary”. _Now what does he want_ me _to do with that?_

‘Haven’t memorised all your inconvenient magical phrases?’ she asked.

He cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘If you mean the phrase I say to transform into a weird super cat, then yes,’ he replied bitterly. ‘Kinda hard to forget about that.’

‘No, I mean the phrases you say to activate your powers,’ she clarified in exasperation. ‘Didn’t your kwami tell you?’

‘The tiny god of death and destruction? He had a lot of things to say, but none of them involved how to actually be a superhero.’

Marinette stared at him in incomprehension. ‘And you didn’t _ask?_ ’

He shrugged.

‘ _You leapt right into a supernatural fight without even knowing how to?!_ ’

‘It wasn’t really a fight—’

‘You’re the only one who can destroy that diary!’

He paused. ‘What?’

‘Oh for the love of… I have the power of creation, you have the power of destruction—you destroy the object, I cleanse the world of evil! You _really_ should have listened to your kwami.’

There were two more beeps from her ear studs. Absent-mindedly, she raised a hand to one of her lobes. ‘Listen, my time is running out. I’m about to transform back. Do you think you could… have a chat with your kwami?’

The boy nodded slowly. ‘I guess.’ He made a move towards the opening of the alley.

‘Wait!’ Marinette called out. ‘Do you have a snack to give to your kwami?’

Cat Boy paused. ‘Snack?’

She rolled her eyes before reaching into the small pouch on her belt to fetch a cookie. ‘Here.’

He received the cookie with a snort, then started towards the street again, soon disappearing around the corner. Marinette crouched down beside Amy.

‘There, there,’ she murmured softly. ‘This will all be over soon.’

Cat Boy returned just a minute later, which was in the nick of time—based on Marinette’s calculations, she had just under two minutes left until her transformation would wear off, and she still needed to purify Paris.

Thankfully, he didn’t waste any time. As soon as he was back, he snatched the diary, raised his other hand beside his head and exclaimed, ‘Cataclysm!’

Around his gloved fist, a strong light the size of a grape expanded to something more similar to a water melon in the span of half a second before it collapsed in on itself again, leaving his fist surrounded by a dark, wispy cloud of smoke. He opened his hand and pressed his open palm against the front of the diary, and then they both watched as the notebook withered and fell to pieces, releasing a small black butterfly from its inside.

Marinette did as Tikki had instructed—she pressed a combination of buttons on the side of her yo-yo so that the top split in half and revealed a cage of light inside of it. Then she swathed at the butterfly and watched it get sucked into the yo-yo. The lid closed itself.

Now came the silly part.

Trying to pretend that neither Cat Boy nor Amy was there with her, Marinette turned her back to them, spun the yo-yo up into the air and exclaimed, ‘Miraculous Ladybug!’

She figured this wasn’t the time for experimentation.

From her yo-yo now exploded a burst of miniature ladybugs which grew in size until the entire alley was filled to the brim. Then they flew—or more like zipped rapidly—in a collective stream out of the alley, towards the statue and onwards. In their wake, they left normalcy. Complete normalcy.

She turned around again. Cat Boy was now crouched next to Amy, who had transformed back into her regular self (at least, that was what Marinette had to assume).

‘Try to believe a little more in the people around you,’ Cat Boy told her with a small, encouraging smile. ‘What you think they feel and what they actually feel usually aren’t the same.’

‘Thank you,’ Amy snivelled. ‘I’ll try. And I’ll find another way to talk to Adrien. Maybe it’ll work out.’

Marinette noticed how the boy’s nostrils flared a little. ‘Yeah, I’m sure it will.’

Amy flashed a smile, and then she ran out of the alley, leaving the two Miraculous-holders to themselves.

Marinette finally asked the question that was at the forefront of her mind. ‘Do you know that girl?’

She thought she saw him tense up, but it might just have been her imagination, because he sounded normal when he answered. ‘No. I saw her diary earlier and the name on the front. Then I made up the rest.’

‘That’s… impressive,’ she observed.

Marinette’s ear studs let out four angry beeps just as a ring on Cat Boy’s finger gave a beep of its own. He glanced down at his hand.

‘You should get out of here, Bugeye. Unless you want me to know who you are, that is.’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ Marinette paused. ‘But I’d like to know what to call you.’

Cat Boy smirked bitterly. ‘Since I’m such a horrible superhero, you might as well call me _Chatastrophe_.’

Marinette felt the corner of her mouth twitch. ‘You’re not _that_ horrible. Just a tiny bit rash, that’s all.’

He made a low bow. ‘And what may I call you, _ma belle coccinelle?_ ’

She thought for a moment. This was it. This was probably the most important moment of her life, and she wouldn’t screw it up. She would come up with _the_ greatest alter-ego name, and it would be so great it would blow Chatastrophe off the roof.

‘You can call me…’ She stood up straight, clicked her heels together and set her gaze straight ahead. ‘ _Lady Lucide._ ’

She waited for a reaction, but when she didn’t get one, she gave up and turned back to the cat. He was watching her with a calculating gaze, almost like he was evaluating her.

‘What?’ she asked, willing herself not to blush.

He shrugged. ‘I thought you’d go with something more… ladybug-like. Something bland.’

‘Do I look bland to you, _chaton_?’

Immediately, Chatastrophe’s face turned sour. ‘Nope. No, you look like a cheeky motherbugger.’

She was about to reply something searing, but was interrupted by five _furious_ beeps. She inhaled sharply. ‘Okay gotta go see you bye!’

She had never run so quickly before, and still she barely made it around the corner and into a telephone booth— _oh, the irony—_ before her transformation wore off and a very tired Tikki appeared. The kwami let out a soft sigh as it landed in Marinette’s outstretched hands.

‘Well done,’ she said in that high-pitched voice of hers. ‘You purified your first Akuma.’

‘The whole luck thing wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,’ Marinette replied. ‘Is it always going to give me things I know will work deep down? Things from my memories?’

The kwami shook a weary head. ‘I don’t know, Marinette. The powers of the Miraculous are a mystery even to me.’

Marinette furrowed her forehead. ‘How can that be? Aren’t you the one who grants me my powers?’

‘Please, Marinette, I’m so tired… Do you have any cookies?’

The girl flushed. ‘I, um… gave the only one I had to Chatastrophe.’ At the sight of Tikki’s exhausted look, she hurried to add, ‘There’s more at Dad’s bakery! I’ll run straight home. Come on.’

* * *

 

‘You didn’t mention I would have a partner.’

Adrien watched the tiny cat god take another bite of his disgustingly smelly cheese. _Good thing I’m now home-schooled, or people would start wondering why I smell like old cheese all of a sudden._

‘Myeh, figured you’d find out on your own. Which you did.’

‘Another thing you didn’t tell me was what superpowers I have.’

‘Didn’t I? I’m pretty sure I told you I’m the “God of Death and Destruction”. It’s not my fault you’re so slow.’ The kwami swallowed a piece of cheese that was almost as big as himself.

Adrien was starting to get really annoyed. ‘You _also_ neglected to mention that—’

‘Hey.’ So fast Adrien didn’t even notice him moving, Plagg zipped up to the boy’s face and gave him a stern look. ‘I don’t much like your cattitude, young kitten.’

Adrien rolled his eyes. ‘I’m _not_ your kitten. And I’ll change my attitude when you do.’

The kwami sighed heavily, but he did float back to his pile of cheese. ‘Fine. You wanna make small talk? Let’s make small talk. How did you _really_ know that girl’s name?’

‘What, you really care about the intrigues of mortals?’

‘Only if it’s juicy.’

Adrien shook his head in amazement. _Of all the tiny gods…_ ‘She was in my class last year; we were paired up for an art project. She’s a sweet girl who doesn’t understand her own potential. I just didn’t know she had a crush on me.’

‘Ugh. Okay, forget that I asked,’ Plagg complained. ‘I was hoping for something much less bland.’

 _Much less bland…_ Adrien’s thoughts inadvertently drifted to his superhero partner. Lady Lucide…

_‘Do I look bland to you?’_

The truth was that she didn’t. He wasn’t even sure why he’d told her he expected her to choose a bland superhero name. Nothing about her was bland. She’d conjured a bottle of vodka out of thin air, for god’s sake.

And she seemed to have something personal against his civilian self. So based on that fact alone, they already had a lot in common.

_‘If by “almighty” you mean “significantly dependent on random chance”, then sure.’_

Despite himself, Adrien smiled. He hid his mouth behind his hand so the kwami wouldn’t see.

Fighting evil with Lady Lucide would be interesting, for sure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first thing Marinette conjures with her Lucky Charm is a bottle of vodka... That can't bode well, can it?


End file.
